Multi-agent based distributed inventory control model

Authors:
Chang Ouk Kim;Ick-Hyun Kwon;Choonjong Kwak
Affiliations:
Department of Information and Industrial Engineering, Yonsei University, Seoul 120-749, Republic of Korea;Department of Systems Management Engineering, Inje University, Gimhae, Gyeongnam 621-749, Republic of Korea;Research Evaluation and Planning Division, Korea Aerospace Research Institute, 45 Eoeun-Dong, Yuseong-Gu, Daejeon 305-333, Republic of Korea
Venue:
Expert Systems with Applications: An International Journal
Year:
2010

Citing 10
Cited 2

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Abstract

We consider a multi-stage inventory control problem with nonstationary customer demand under a customer service-level constraint. We propose a multi-agent based model for distributed inventory control systems. In this model, the agent at the first stage is called a retail agent and those at the remaining stages are called supply agents. The retail agent makes an effort to satisfy a target customer service level by adjusting its order release time according to the changes of customer demand trends. On the other hand, each supply agent tries to control its order release time so that product supply from its upstream agent is synchronized with the order request from its downstream agent. A cooperative demand estimation protocol and a distributed action-reward learning technique are developed to satisfy the target customer service level under nonstationary situations. A simulation based experiment was performed to evaluate the performance of the proposed multi-agent model.